The marketing of consumer goods in today's society is a complex process made more complex by the needs of both the consumer and the marketer. On the one hand, for the consumer to take advantage of warranties, return and replacement options, servicing and other options concerning a particular consumer item, the consumer/customer must provide evidence of ownership. Typically this means, at a minimum, a sales receipt. For high dollar investments, such as cars and boats and the like, proof of ownership is provided in the nature of an owner's title. Clearly, the vast majority of consumer purchases are not for such high dollar consumer items and yet, the need for proof of ownership for other purchases is often just as great. The difficulty of retaining sales receipts, their transitory nature, and their sheer number, however, places a burden on the customer.
On the other hand, marketers offering consumer items to customers know that their business depends upon accepting returned consumer items in appropriate circumstances. A tension, however, results when the customer cannot produce proof of ownership when attempting to return an item.
Additionally, in an effort to better serve customers, marketers spend enormous amounts of money attempting to accumulate data about “qualified” buyers. Qualified buyers are buyers, for example, who actually made a purchase in the marketer's store. Warranty information cards obtain such qualified buyer information assuming the customer takes the time and effort to fill out and return the warranty card. Some marketers require the customer's phone number as a way of obtaining qualified data, such as the street address, city, and state of the customer. These and other known methods of obtaining qualified data are labor-intensive, difficult to obtain and difficult to relate to a particular consumer purchase.
In a related area of interest for marketers, successful creation of a qualified buyer database enables marketers to provide customized, customer specific, services. It is profitable for marketers to provide such customized service. However, while it is easy to track the buying habits of well-known, wealthy consumers, it is difficult to track the buying habits of the much more numerous and profitable “non-wealthy” consumers.